Kadeeae’s Neighborhood

I'm putting Patak's Mango Chicken cooking sauce to work tonight, since the kitchen is only half cleaned and I'm loathe to start a huge and messy cooking project in addition to everything else I've got to do in there.

So, start by sauteeing some chicken until it's browned, then toss it out of the pan. In go chopped onions, green peppers and cherry tomatoes. Swish around and then add the sauce. Lower heat and cook 20 minutes. Add cooked chicken and simmer another 10 minutes.

Serve with rice.

Done! Wish I could say the same for the kitchen...

I just love this footage of Christopher Walken dancing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMZwZiU0kKs

Sorry, no embed code!

Another of Norm's good 'uns; Praise You, guarantedd to get me dancing every time

Well, after my husband cleaned up the bathroom this morning, I decided it was time to go after "Hurricane Aram" and do a little cleaning up myself. He's off at a folk festival today, so I have the house to myself. What better time to get rid of the crap...err, stuff...that's been lying around.

So, I'm starting with the kitchen:

Egads the kitchen

It's the usual mess at the end of the week, only this time I've decided to clean it down to the shine. So far, I'm washing and scrubbing away. Damn, I'll be able to look at my microwave again and actually see the inside - at least until the hubby uses it again and then walks away with splatter all over the inside again. Sigh.

At one time in its life, this used to be a dining room table:

Oh no 2

And, damn it, it will be again! I don't care if I have to put a fence around it.

And, then there's just plain ol' me at the end of an exhausting week. No one else to blame:

Oh no 1

I woke up to a complete surprise this morning: my husband was cleaning the bathroom. Yes, after weeks of prodding, begging and he finally acknowledging that the house was finally getting to him, he finally started in. I saw him emerge from the bathroom with rubber gloves and a toilet brush. With all the water going, I thought he was taking a shower.

Aram's a pretty laid back guy when it comes to cleaning. "What's wrong?" he'll say. "I don't see anything wrong." Meanwhile, I'm having a heart attack looking at the house after a month or two (or three?) of don't see-don't touch. I keep threatening to get a cleaning service and he keeps saying that's something we should do ourselves.

Right. THAT'S SOMETHING WE SHOULD DO OURSELVES. Okay, go right ahead. Hear that screeching of brakes and smoke? That's my husband screeching to a halt and suddenly having many things to do that are more important.

But, this morning I guess he finally relented. The bathroom's pretty clean, although I'll have to go over the floor with a damp mop, since it's sticky to walk on. Did he notice? What do YOU think?

What, ME Clean?

I seem to have run over a milestone.  I think I felt something jarring under my tires, but it's really hard to say when you're doing donuts, hanging out the window, singing at the top of your lungs to the song on the radio.  I'm pretty sure I ran over something though... several times.  heh

I've had a lot to think about this week, well I always do, but things have been falling so nicely into place for a change.  I'm just about a month from my 38th birthday celebration, and I think I've finally grown up ...just a *wee* bit.

What does it feel like?  Hmm.  More stable, really.  I'm not as easily baited, not as tempted to get riled up when I know having a fit won't change things, not as willing to let myself be swept along by crazy mood swings.  I'm so much more content keeping to myself.  I don't feel like I have *ANYTHING* to prove to *ANYONE*, and yet I finally can feel a genuine need for self-improvement that comes only from within, only for my own benefit, not for some stupid dog and pony show or silly competition with the Joneses, whoever the hell they are.  I like who I am, a lot.

I've been working through these things in fits and starts for years, but very recently it's all kind of arranged itself into place and anchored itself down.

Don't get me wrong!  I'm still going to eat too much candy, occasionally drink too much, have dessert before dinner when the urge strikes, play in the rain, dance and sing like a fool, still doing donuts while squealing like a banshee, ..., etc.  Being a grown up comes with so much responsibility, and membership MUST have its privileges!  I'm just feeling more in control; I'm not dead inside.

I'm thinking about rearranging my online presence.  I may delete my LJ.  Facebook may go too.  I'll probably keep my VOX, and MySpace serves as a nice little calling-card for any old friends that might want to look me up.  ...Well, that's my current thinking anyhow.  I'll mull it over for a while.  There's so much to do in the world, and I've been very undisciplined when it comes to letting the internet take precedence over my real world presence.

Speaking of real world, I have work to do.  I had some priorities rearranged at work yesterday, and that means I'll probably spend a few weekends working to adjust to the new deadline.  It's all good though.  I'll pay up a few weekends if that's the price for having this longterm albatross around my neck wrapped up and pushed away all the sooner. 

Fortunately, it's muggy as hell today - a good day for spending the whole day sitting in front of an air conditioner.

I had some weird dreams last night, when I finally did fall asleep. I remember fragments of two of them, one more vivid than the other. In the vivid dream, the earth was dead. Something had happened and, basically, the earth was a goner. I remember being told not to go near a body of water of some type, because dead people were in it. There were some survivors, but not many. I was one of them. I kept wondering when things would begin to smell and where food would be coming from. Then I heard something about possibly using kinetic energy to fashion a vehicle that would escape the earth and go somewhere else (I guess). I remember seeing examples that looked like old movies of airplanes that were powered by kinetic energy. By the way, I'm not up on my energy sources and for the life of me didn't know why kinetic energy got in there. I knew there was no electricity, no oil, no gas, and no rockets or other human-made vehicles to use. All we had was what we could put together from things that were left. Actually, I just looked up kinetic energy now. Kinetic energy is the energy that is generated by an object that's already in motion. So, anything that's moving, I guess.

I remember a plastic version of an African thumb harp (kalimba). It's the small musical instrument that's made from pieces of metal attached to a wooden sounding board. You play the instrument with your thumbs, thrumming the pieces of metal to make a sound. It's very melodic, for such a simple instrument. I had something in one hand and was trying to play the plastic kalimba (which was round and very small). Somehow, this was an example of kinetic energy. Clearly, I had my energy systems wrong! It didn't sound very good, either!

A lot of the dream was devoted to next steps. Okay, here we are in disaster-land. What's next, if we want to survive? I had to learn about a bunch of new things and hoped there would be enough time to do it. Any minute I was expecting starvation and rotting corpses to start destroying what was left and me along with it.

Second dream: way less vivid and interesting. I was in my kitchen and my kitchen cabinets, the ones nearest the sink, would not close. They were off-center, somehow. Then I noticed that the hoses for our portable dishwasher were coming out of them to get to the dishwasher. That, somehow, contributed to the cabinets not closing. This is a cabinet below, not above, by the way. It's directly beneath my one and only counter top in the kitchen. (I hate my kitchen, but that's another story).

Very bizarre. Now I want to find out more about kalimbas.